Category: News

Trump surprises some Republicans with endorsements

Posted on (Updated by Emily Brooks

Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) first heard that he had been endorsed by former President Trump when he looked at his phone.

“I got a text message: 'You've been endorsed,’” Donalds told The Hill. 

The first-term lawmaker was surprised, but not shocked. He has been a supporter of Trump and has a good relationship with him. 

Republican candidates in contested primaries this year have lobbied hard for Trump's backing, and most who get his blessing have gone on to win the party's nomination.

But Trump’s endorsements of incumbents have often come without members seeking them, a key indication that he is running up his primary endorsement success rate by putting his stamp of approval on members almost certain to win their races.

Trump touts the success of his endorsement record in Republican primaries, his record serving as a measure of his influence on the party. He recently flaunted his “Perfect Records in Arizona, Kansas, Michigan, and Missouri.”

Trump has been a kingmaker in a number of key primary races, with bold endorsements in Senate primaries in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and with some revenge challengers to House Republicans who voted to impeach him after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Capitol Hill.

“Trump used his own metrics to determine who he supports. It's been pretty successful,” said Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.). “The numbers don't lie.”

Yet in keeping with his pattern as president, Trump regularly inflates his numbers. He bragged on Truth Social after Tennessee’s primary that he had a “Perfect Record of Endorsements, 8-0.” Left unsaid was that all were incumbents, of which six ran unopposed, and the other two did not have serious challengers.

Conversations with more than a dozen House Republican members who spoke to The Hill suggested that it is normal for Trump to bestow an endorsement without a member reaching out first.

“I did not seek it,” Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.) said of getting a Trump endorsement ahead of his primary. “I just was going about my business, you know, campaigning and representing my district. But he reached out, and — through one of his political people — and offered an endorsement.”

After notification that Trump wanted to endorse them, the former president often calls the member and has a brief chat before the official “Save America” endorsement release, several House GOP members said.

Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.) said that he did not seek endorsements because he was running in an uncontested primary but was happy to accept one from Trump.

“He gave the greatest Trump line ever, by the way,” Armstrong said, when he called the former president back after missing his initial pre-endorsement announcement call. “Like, ‘I'm sorry, Mr. President, I missed your call.’ He says, ‘Don't worry. The call is temporary, that voicemail’s forever.’”

Norman and Reps. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) and Michael Cloud (R-Texas) all similarly said that Trump had reached out to them.

House GOP leadership has been involved in facilitating some of the endorsements.

Rep. Randy Feenstra (R-Iowa) said that someone in House GOP leadership gave him a “heads up” that the endorsement from Trump would be coming.

And some incumbent GOP members, meanwhile, have reached out to Trump this year. 

Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) said he sought an endorsement from Trump through House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and his political team. Guthrie had a phone chat with Trump before his endorsement was released about a week before the primary, which he then won by 60 points.

Now out of office and looking to retain a hold on the party, Trump has made more formal endorsements in primary races than ever before.

By the end of August 2020, Trump had endorsed 111 candidates in House, Senate, and governor’s races, with 109 of those advancing to the general election, according to a FiveThirtyEight analysis at the time.

He is running well ahead of that number in primaries this cycle, with 20 gubernatorial endorsements, 21 Senate endorsements, and 156 House endorsements so far, an analysis by The Hill found — not counting those who dropped out before the primary election, who Trump un-endorsed, or his dual “ERIC” endorsement in the Missouri GOP Senate primary, where state Attorney General Eric Schmitt defeated former Gov. Eric Greitens.

Some of Trump’s endorsements were a clear attempt to clear the field in key races, such as when he urged “JUST ONE CANDIDATE” to run against Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.). But most of those were incumbent members who were likely to win renomination regardless of a Trump endorsement.

Trump has backed 134 incumbent House members, accounting for more than half the GOP conference. And 66 candidates that Trump endorsed in House races ran or are running in uncontested primaries, or in a nonpartisan primary without any other Republican candidates on the ballot.

Trump's team asserted that his endorsement helps Republicans have larger victories.

“The power of President Trump’s endorsement hasn’t just resulted in massive wins for Republicans across the nation, it also has meant bigger margins of victory and an ever-growing movement for the future," Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich said in a statement. "Every candidate who earns the endorsement of President Trump benefits tremendously and has been gracious in their appreciation for his support."

A couple of the endorsements indicate a willingness to bury old hatchets.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) received Trump’s endorsement a week before his primary. That came more than two years after a testy phone call between the two men.

“The last conversation we had was on my cell phone in the Speaker's Lobby on March 27th of 2020. He was upset,” Massie said.

Massie tried to force a roll call vote on the CARES Act coronavirus stimulus bill, sending lawmakers scrambling to get back to Washington to avoid a delay in passing the legislation. The move enraged Trump, who called for Massie to be thrown out of the Republican Party.

But in his statement endorsing Massie, Trump called him “a first-rate Defender of the Constitution.”

Massie is one of 36 incumbent Republicans, 26 in the House and 10 in the Senate, endorsed by Trump who did not vote to object to certification of electoral votes from Arizona or Pennsylvania on Jan. 6.

Trump has endorsed just one incumbent member who voted in favor of creating a bipartisan, bicameral commission on the Jan. 6 Capitol attack: Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-Fla.). 

Gimenez, who said he sought Trump’s endorsement, talked with the former president about his vote for the commission.

“I explained to him why I voted for the first one and not the second one. The second one I consider to be illegitimate,” Gimenez said. “So, we had a good conversation about that.”

Challengers to incumbent House Republicans have attacked those who voted in favor of the commission in primaries this year. Republicans blocked the measure in the Senate, prompting creation of the House select committee investigating Jan. 6. Reps. Cheney and Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) were the only Republicans to vote for the ultimate panel’s creation.

The biggest line in the sand for Trump appears to be voting to impeach. He stayed out of some races where votes for the Jan. 6 commission became a line of attack, such as the cases of Reps. Dusty Johnson (S.D.), Michael Guest (Texas), and Van Taylor (R-Texas), who was forced into a runoff and ended his campaign after the primary over an affair scandal.

Many Republican candidates hoping to win Trump’s endorsement flocked to Mar-a-Lago ahead of the primary season, hosting events or hoping to get some face time with the former president. Nevada gubernatorial candidate Michele Fiore even purchased ads early this year on Fox News in Palm Beach, Fla., hoping that the former president was watching. She was unsuccessful, with Trump later endorsing Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo.

But the best indicator of whether a candidate would win a Trump endorsement was usually if he or she looked likely to win.

More than 96 percent of Trump-endorsed House candidates who have had primaries so far won their primaries, not counting those who dropped out before the election.

Trump un-endorsed Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) in the GOP Senate primary and then endorsed Katie Britt, who had overtaken him in the polls. He made an early endorsement last September for Michigan state Rep. Steve Carra against pro-impeachment Rep. Fred Upton, but redistricting scrambled the map and put Upton up against Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-Mich.), to whom Trump then switched his endorsement. Upton later said he would not run for reelection.

A large number of Trump’s endorsements were announced in the days before primary elections, with some of those candidates not worried about losing.

But that hasn’t put a damper on incumbent members’ thrill of getting the endorsement.

“Anytime you have an endorsement from a President of the United States, that's really cool,” said Donalds.

Paige Kupas, Stephen Neukam and Zach Wendling contributed research.

--Updated at 6:39 a.m.

Spike in FBI threats unsettles the right

Posted on (Updated by Emily Brooks

An uptick in threats to the FBI after it executed a search warrant at former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate is unsettling the political right, with some calling on allies of the former president to tone down their rhetoric.

Barriers have been erected outside the perimeter of the FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., while the FBI and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reportedly issued a joint bulletin Friday warning about spikes in threats that included a bomb threat at FBI headquarters and calls for “civil war” and “armed rebellion.”

Fox News host Steve Doocy on Monday urged the former president and others to “tamp down the rhetoric against the FBI” in light of the threats, while Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that Trump’s language was “inflammatory.”

“I don’t want to put any law enforcement in the bull’s-eye of a potential threat,” McCaul said.

The bulletin issued by DHS and the FBI cited an incident in which a man armed with an AR-15-style rifle allegedly fired a nail gun into an FBI office in Cincinnati last week, according to NBC News. He was fatally shot by police after a chase and standoff, according to Ohio State Highway Patrol.

Trump on Monday in an interview with Fox News did say the temperature on the issue needed to come down, adding that he’d told aides to reach out to the Department of Justice to help.

But in the same interview, Trump directed his wrath at the Justice Department and suggested that his supporters’ anger was justified. Trump said that Americans are “not going to stand for another scam,” said that the FBI can “break into a president’s house” in a “sneak attack” and suggested that the FBI “could have planted anything they wanted” during the search.

In another post on Truth Social, his social media platform, he claimed that his passports had been taken during the search. Passports were not included on a list of items mentioned as part of a warrant released on Friday, though some of the descriptions of what was seized were broad in nature.

The president’s account on the platform his own business launched is one of his most direct ways to reach supporters online now, since he lost access to his Twitter and Facebook accounts after his posts the day of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.

Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), a former FBI agent, told Margaret Brennan of “Face the Nation” on Sunday that he was concerned about the safety of FBI agents.

“Violence is never the answer to anything,” Fitzpatrick said. “We live in a democracy that's 246 years old, Margaret. That's not long, that's just a few generations, and yet we're the world's only democracy. And the only way that can come unraveled is if we have disrespect for our institutions that lead to Americans turning on Americans and the whole system becomes unraveled. And a lot of that starts with the words we're using.”

“I'm also urging all my colleagues to understand the weight of your words and support law enforcement no matter what,” he added.

Republicans have sought to differentiate between Biden appointees and rank-and-file FBI agents when raising concerns about potential politicization of the department.

“I won't smear the FBI, like the career FBI agents,” Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) said Friday. “But the political appointees running this stuff are very worrisome.”

FBI Director Christopher Wray was appointed by Trump in 2017.

Some Republicans have continued to use incendiary rhetoric to speak to their massive online bases. 

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), using her official congressional account since her personal Twitter was suspended in January over COVID-19 misinformation, told her 1 million followers Monday that “Republicans must force” the “political persecution” to stop. Greene filed articles of impeachment against Attorney General Merrick Garland last week.

Katherine Keneally, a senior analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), said she is most concerned about the potential for extremist groups to capitalize on this moment to mobilize for future membership. 

“Specifically, any accelerationist groups that are seeing an uptick in people being upset at the FBI, a government agency, works very well for recruitment for an organization that wants to collapse the US government. So I think that's where my concern is, that these even more nefarious groups are going to use this as a catalyst moment for recruitment,” she said. 

According to a report compiled by ISD analysts, social media accounts believed to belong to the alleged Cincinnati gunman, Ricky Shiffer, suggest he was “motivated by a combination of conspiratorial beliefs related to former President Trump and the 2020 election (among others), interest in killing federal law enforcement, and the recent search warrant executed at Mar-a-Lago earlier this week.”

ISD researchers found that Shiffer was likely prepping for the attack for at least two days, based on posts from a since-removed Truth Social account believed to belong to him.

The researchers also found posts and photographs placing Shiffer at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, although it is not confirmed if he was present during the insurrection, and posts on the right-wing video site Rumble that show Shiffer encouraging users to “get in touch with the Proud Boys,” a far-right group. 

Keneally said the Ohio incident hasn’t been mentioned widely by other far-right users of online platforms, likely because it wasn’t successful. But researchers are still seeing general calls for violence targeting the FBI. 

Those monitoring the online vitriol, across mainstream platforms and fringe sites that cater to conservative users, warned that the posts from lawmakers and influencers online could incite their followers to take real-world action.

“It certainly plays a role in the radicalization process,” Keneally said.

“While they might not be directly calling for violence, the conspiratorial allegations certainly play a role in how these people are radicalized, and how they go down that path, regardless of whether it's an official stating, ‘kill the FBI,’ that's not what needs to be said to help radicalize. You just accused the FBI of ‘overstepping their boundaries,’ or like ‘taking away your constitutional rights,’ and that's what that's what people are mobilizing around,” Keneally said. 

The Memo: What the latest dramatic twists mean in the Trump-FBI saga

Posted on (Updated by Niall Stanage

The 45th president of the United States is under investigation for potential violations of the Espionage Act.

That one potent fact was the most explosive bombshell on Friday as the saga of the FBI investigation into former President Trump took several new turns.

The story has sidelined every other piece of news in the political world this week. The starting gun was fired when Trump himself confirmed early reports of a search of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Monday. The pace of developments has not eased since.

Trump being Trump, even news of possible crimes committed by him had a downside for Democrats. The passage of a major piece of legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, long sought by President Biden and his party, became a sideshow to the Trump-centric main event.

Political insiders of every stripe are wondering what to make of the most recent discoveries — and where the story goes from here.

The possible crimes

We now know the FBI search of Trump’s estate was premised on an investigation of three potential offenses. 

One of those possible charges had been widely predicted: it pertains to the concealment or removal of official documents.

Another covers the destruction, alteration or concealment of records "with the intent to impede, obstruct or influence" an investigation — an intriguing charge given the number of other probes directed at Trump. 

The biggest shock came with the inclusion of a third possible offense under section 793 of Title 18 of the U.S. Criminal Code.

The language of the statute is complicated, but its main thrust is that it is a criminal offense for someone to misuse, mishandle or fail to guard national security information that they believe “could be to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation.”

What that means, exactly, in relation to Trump is so far unknown — though it appears on its face plausibly consistent with a Thursday evening Washington Post scoop that asserted investigators were looking for information about nuclear weapons.

The things we don’t know

The feverish speculation that has gripped Washington is partly the result of the extraordinary nature of an FBI search of a former president’s home — something that has never happened before. 

But it is also a consequence of a situation in which many key details have been revealed in part, but not entirely.

The revelation about the Espionage Act came with the release of two documents Friday — the search warrant for Mar-a-Lago and the inventory of items seized. 

The previous day, Attorney General Merrick Garland had announced at a brief press conference that he wanted those documents unsealed. His request met with no opposition from the former president and his legal team.

Importantly, however, neither the Department of Justice nor Trump’s team expressed any wish to make the affidavit that underlies the search public. 

That document would give much more insight into investigators’ thinking, since it made their case to a federal magistrate for believing that a crime or crimes had been committed.

The inventory is key nevertheless. It asserts that among the items seized were numerous instances of classified material, including “various classified/TS/SCI documents” — an abbreviation that refers to one of the highest levels of classification: Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information.

The list also included such intriguing entries as “Info re: President of France,” “Handwritten note” and “Leatherbound box of documents.” An executive order granting clemency to longtime Trump ally Roger Stone was also among the items taken.

The broader view

The 30,000-ft view is one in which every new tidbit becomes ammunition in the nation’s increasingly bellicose partisan wars. 

The past week has seen Trump critics gleeful at what they imagine to be his imminent indictment, if not imprisonment; and his diehard supporters just as adamant that he is the victim of a nefarious plot by the ill-defined “Deep State.”

Trump is arguing that the information in his possession at Mar-a-Lago was already declassified. That claim is sure to be scrutinized and tested.

The usual coterie of his staunchest allies is rallying around. Late Friday, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) told reporters at the Capitol that she was on her way to file articles of impeachment against Garland. She accused the attorney general of using his powers “to politically persecute Joe Biden’s enemies.” 

The current moment is only likely to become more febrile with that kind of rhetoric. It's dangerous enough as is.

On Thursday, a man was shot and killed by law enforcement in Ohio after allegedly trying to breach security at the FBI office in Cincinnati.

The man was identified as Ricky Shiffer. A social media account in that name had encouraged attacks on the FBI. Another post, on the day of the Mar-a-Lago raid, alluded to a crossing of the rubicon against which citizens should rise up.

"We must not tolerate this one," the post said. "This time we must respond with force."

One account bearing Shiffer's name also appeared to indicate its author had been in or around the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

As for Trump, he faces legal dangers on several fronts. He repeatedly pleaded the Fifth Amendment earlier this week during a deposition in a civil case in New York. At least three other criminal probes could endanger him.

Legal experts say that, when it comes to the Mar-a-Lago matter, charges could be months away if they are pressed at all. 

The former president has skated away from trouble many times before. He remains, in spite of it all, the favorite to win the GOP nomination in 2024, should he enter the race.

But right now, the former president is once again sailing in uncharted waters.

The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.

Republicans rally behind Trump after search warrant is unsealed

Posted on (Updated by Mike Lillis

House Republicans on Friday wasted no time rallying behind former President Trump following a court’s decision to unseal the search warrant that had empowered the FBI to search his Mar-a-Lago residence in South Florida earlier in the week. 

The newly public warrant revealed that the Department of Justice had suspected Trump of violating the Espionage Act, among other federal statutes, when he stockpiled reams of documents at Mar-a-Lago after he left office last year.

FBI agents on Monday retrieved 11 sets of documents categorized as classified to some degree, an inventory of the items seized showed, including one set labeled “various classified/TS/SCI documents,” a highly-classified category of sensitive items typically pertaining to national security. Agents also retrieved four sets of "top secret" items.

But Republican lawmakers on Friday dismissed the news, accusing the Department of Justice (DOJ) of conducting a political witch hunt designed for the sole purpose of harming Trump politically as he weighs another run at the White House in 2024. 

"What they've been doing to President Trump is a political persecution,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) told reporters on the steps of the Capitol. “Merrick Garland has abused his position of power, as the attorney general, to politically persecute Joe Biden’s enemies. And the whole purpose of this is to prevent President Trump from ever being able to hold office.” 

“We cannot tolerate this in America,” she continued, “where our great institutions are wielded and abused in such a way to defeat people’s political enemies.” 

Greene then walked into the Capitol and introduced articles of impeachment against Garland. 

She was hardly alone. Other GOP lawmakers also defended Trump against a DOJ they’re portraying as out of control. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), another close Trump ally, wondered why the department isn’t continuing its investigation into Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of State, who came under scrutiny for using a private server to conduct official business, but was never charged. 

“Did they find Hillary Clinton’s 33,000 deleted emails in the safe? That’s what I want to see,” said Boebert, who also endorsed the effort to impeach Garland. 

Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), chairman of the Republican Study Committee, didn’t go quite so far, but accused Garland of withholding information vital to the public’s understanding of the investigation.  

“The fact that Merrick Garland is selectively working through the media rather than releasing further details, is again – makes all of this very fishy,” he said. “There's so much that the American people deserve to know that we don't know.” 

Other Republicans brought up various DOJ investigations of the past, suggesting the department goes soft on Democrats and their allies while dropping the hammer on Republicans and other conservatives. 

Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) cited another concern, saying he’s worried that the DOJ was overly aggressive in targeting a former president. 

“People are rightfully upset [about] the precedent this sets. It seems highly unnecessary to be sending in armed FBI agents into Mar-a-Lago when he could have just subpoenaed these documents. He supposedly knew they were there. He was being cooperative already … with other documents,” said Crenshaw. 

Earlier in the year, Trump had turned over 15 boxes of documents and other materials to the National Archives. The DOJ later subpoenaed Trump for additional documents the agency suspected he had withheld. 

Garland on Thursday had delivered a highly unusual statement defending Monday’s search, saying the DOJ had first attempted “less intrusive means,” which failed to yield the remaining materials. 

Democrats, meanwhile, have defended the agency. While they’re eagerly awaiting more details, they’re voicing concerns that at least some of the documents might have been related to defense and national security.  

"If the nature of these documents is what [it] appears to be, this is very serious,” said Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

Emily Brooks contributed. 

Pelosi courts controversy with Taiwan trip that’s personal to Speaker

Posted on (Updated by Mike Lillis

Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan has stirred a storm of controversy, heightening tensions with China and captivating the world’s attention.

For the California Democrat, however, the trip is something much more personal.

Pelosi has a long track record of confronting Chinese leaders head-on, particularly on issues of human rights, stretching back decades to include the massacre of pro-democracy activists on Tiananmen Square.

Her decision to visit Taiwan — a self-governing democracy that Beijing claims as its own — ranks among the most conspicuous exhibitions of that advocacy campaign; Pelosi on Tuesday became the highest-ranking U.S. official to set foot in Taiwan in 25 years.

Through that lens, Pelosi's trek — taken in the twilight of her long career against the wishes of the Biden administration — is not only a diplomatic endeavor to demonstrate U.S. support for Taiwanese autonomy, but a legacy-building crusade for a figure who likes to boast she takes “second place to no one” in her condemnation of Beijing's human rights atrocities.

It’s a historic trip for a historic Speaker — and it may prove to be the crowning global performance of a long political run that’s widely expected to reach an end with the close of this Congress.

“Pelosi has a long history of challenging Beijing — including her visit to Tiananmen Square in 1991 – unfurling an American flag no less,” Sarah Binder, political science professor at George Washington University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said in an email Tuesday, just hours after the Speaker landed in Taipei.

“If she does indeed retire after this Congress, I suspect the trip will be viewed as the capstone of her legacy on the issue (well, if all goes well, that is),” Binder said.

That “if” has also been on the minds of top Biden administration officials, particularly those in the Pentagon who had cautioned against Pelosi’s visit over concerns that it would trigger a retaliatory response from Beijing. President Biden had vocalized the Defense Department’s apprehensions late last month, telling reporters that “the military thinks it’s not a good idea right now.”

Yet Biden never attempted to dissuade the trip himself, Pelosi said, and White House officials more recently have come around to bless the visit — at least publicly — while warning China against any sort of bellicose response.

“We shouldn’t be — as a country — we shouldn’t be intimidated by that rhetoric or those potential actions,” White House national security spokesman John Kirby said Monday in an interview with CNN. “This is an important trip for the Speaker to be on and we’re going to do whatever we can to support her.”

Chinese leaders have ignored those warnings, following up their initial admonitions with new threats after Pelosi arrived in Taipei. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs quickly issued a statement saying Pelosi’s visit not only represents “a serious violation of the one-China principle,” but will have “a severe impact on the political foundation of China-U.S. relations.”

“It gravely undermines peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, and sends a seriously wrong signal to the separatist forces for ‘Taiwan independence,’ ” the ministry charged.

Shortly afterward, Beijing announced that it would launch “targeted military operations” around Taiwan.

Pelosi on Tuesday explained her reasoning behind the trip with some unveiled shots of her own, accusing Beijing’s leaders of doing everything they can — economically, diplomatically, militarily and even through cyberattacks — to punish Taiwan for its enduring resistance to Chinese rule.

“In the face of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) accelerating aggression, our congressional delegation’s visit should be seen as an unequivocal statement that America stands with Taiwan, our democratic partner, as it defends itself and its freedom,” Pelosi wrote in an op-ed for The Washington Post.

That message of democratic solidarity, she added, is even more urgent in the backdrop of Russia’s invasion of a peaceful Ukraine earlier in the year.

“As Russia wages its premeditated, illegal war against Ukraine, killing thousands of innocents — even children — it is essential that America and our allies make clear that we never give in to autocrats,” she wrote.

Pelosi’s place in history is already assured. She was the first woman to lead any party in Congress, and in ascending to the Speakership in 2007 became the highest-ranking woman in U.S. history — a distinction surpassed only last year when Kamala Harris was sworn in as vice president.

Over that span, Pelosi shepherded the passage of historic legislation, including ObamaCare, an economic stimulus package in response to the Great Recession and the Wall Street reforms that followed that financial collapse. More recently, she oversaw both impeachments of President Trump, and launched the select committee that’s now investigating Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Her shift this week to take on China promises to extend that legacy well beyond domestic policy and into the realm of foreign diplomacy. Binder, of Brookings, said it has highlighted the fact that congressional legislators can play a crucial role in areas typically reserved for the executive branch.

“In a word, their actions can be consequential for public affairs far beyond the halls of Congress,” she said.

Pelosi’s outspoken campaign against China’s despots, launched with her 1991 visit to Tiananmen Square, hardly ended there. In the years since, the Speaker has also condemned Chinese abuses against pro-democracy activists across Hong Kong and Tibet; she’s pressed Chinese leaders directly to release political prisoners; she’s met a number of times with the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of Tibet; and most recently, she fiercely denounced Beijing’s treatment of the Uyghurs, a Muslim minority group in China’s western-most province, labeling it a genocide.

Pelosi’s show of solidarity with Taiwan this week has been met with overwhelming support on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers in both parties have cheered her defiance of Beijing, even as it ruffles feathers at the White House.

“I can see how it could create some tension in the region,” said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.). “But I was telling some people the other night: Don't get concerned about it. I don't think anybody's trying to create an international incident.

“If I had anything to say to the Chinese leadership it would just be: Be cool."

Republicans are also on board. Led by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), 26 GOP senators issued a statement Tuesday praising her decision.

“She has every right to go,” McConnell later told reporters.

Trump slams McConnell as ‘disloyal’ amid Jan. 6 hearings

Posted on (Updated by Alexander Bolton

Former President Trump on Thursday vented his anger with Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) during the House select Jan. 6 committee’s hearing, slamming him as a “disloyal sleazebag” despite the recent victories McConnell helped secure for Trump’s legacy.

Trump appeared to lose his temper after the Jan. 6 committee played a clip of McConnell's speech on the Senate floor during Trump’s second impeachment trial in which he blamed the former president for inciting the attack on the U.S. Capitol. 

“Is this the same Mitch McConnell who was losing big in Kentucky, and came to the White House to BEG me for an Endorsement and help? Without me he would have lost in a landslide. A disloyal sleaze bag!” Trump posted on Truth Social, his social media platform.  

Trump appeared to be referring to the 2020 election, but McConnell never faced any serious danger from his Democratic challenger Amy McGrath. He wound up winning a seventh Senate term by a margin of nearly 20 points.

Trump’s vitriolic attack on the GOP leader came only a week after Democrats formally abandoned their plans to reverse the 2017 tax cuts, one of Trump’s biggest domestic accomplishments.  

McConnell mentioned the importance of preserving Trump’s tax cuts at a press conference on Tuesday.  

“One day we think they’re going to leave taxes alone, which of course would preserve the 2017 tax bill, the next day they’re not so sure,” McConnell said of Democrats’ plans to move a budget reconciliation package.  

McConnell also played a key role in helping Trump add three conservative justices to the Supreme Court — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — who joined a 6-3 conservative majority in overturning Roe v. Wade last month. 

Yet, Trump remains fixated on McConnell’s refusal to acknowledge his unfounded claims that the 2020 election was stolen as well as on the GOP leader’s fiery denunciation of Trump’s actions leading to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.  

McConnell excoriated Trump at the end of his second impeachment trial for what he called a “disgraceful dereliction of duty.”  

The Jan. 6 committee on Thursday played a clip of McConnell speaking on the Senate floor in which he said “there’s no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day.” 

“The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of the president,” he said. “Having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories and reckless hyperbole which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth.”  

McConnell has since declined to speak about Trump or even mention him by name in public. 

On Tuesday when asked whether he would oppose Trump's candidacy for president in 2024 if he runs again, McConnell only predicted that the former president would face a lot of competition for the nomination. 

“I think we’re going to have a crowded field for president. I assume most of that will unfold later and people will be picking their candidates in a crowded primary field,” he told reporters.

Liz Cheney doesn’t care what the pro-Trump GOP thinks of her

Posted on (Updated by Mike Lillis

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) didn't make any new friends in the GOP with her star turn bashing former President Trump in prime time on Thursday night. It doesn't bother her a bit.

Cheney, a dynastic figure who sits in the House seat once held by her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, used her high perch on the Jan. 6 select committee to accuse Trump of abusing the powers of the presidency to orchestrate nothing short of an attempted coup — explosive charges that have reinforced her status as Public Enemy No. 1 in the eyes of the MAGA faithful. 

The much-watched hearing has further complicated Cheney’s path to reelection in deep-red Wyoming, a Trump stronghold where her primary opponent has the energetic backing of the 45th president, who is actively stumping against the mutinous incumbent. 

But as Cheney's attacks on Trump have grown only louder, it's increasingly clear that she's motivated by something other than securing her future in the lower chamber. Whether that thing is a self-sacrificing desire to save the country's democratic traditions from the former president or an egomaniacal effort to advance her own fame and political powers largely depends on the perspective of her fans and critics.

What is not in question is that Cheney has staked her legacy on her relentless anti-Trump activism — a reputation that will become only more deeply entrenched as the select committee airs its investigative findings in a long series of public hearings that will dominate discussion in Washington through the rest of the month.

“President Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack,” Cheney, the vice chairwoman of the select committee, said during the panel’s prime-time hearing Thursday night. 

For the like-minded Trump critics, Cheney is an enormous asset to the investigation, offering the committee not only a good dose of bipartisan legitimacy, but also a seasoned legal mind who knows the ins and outs of the GOP conference and its complicated dealings with the former president. 

“She’s an awesome lawyer, … [and] she was the chair of the House Republican Conference,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a former professor of constitutional law who also sits on the investigative panel. “So she obviously knows the terrain better than anyone else on the committee.”

To Trump’s allies on and off of Capitol Hill, however, Cheney is simply a traitor to the party — a “Pelosi Republican” who’s been all but disowned as GOP leaders try to tap Trump’s popularity in their effort to flip control of the House in November’s midterm elections.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who wants to take the speakership next year, said this week that the responsibility for the Jan. 6 falls on “everybody in the country.”

In one sense, Cheney is an unlikely figure to assume the role of Republican iconoclast. Her family ranks among the most powerful GOP dynasties of the last half century, and her father's unique brand of conservatism — combined with his no-apologies approach to power-policymaking — made him a favorite with the Republican base. 

In a similar vein, Liz Cheney’s staunch conservative positions — including strong attacks on gay marriage during an early campaign — made her a villain in the eyes of Democrats nationwide, but helped propel her quickly into the leadership ranks once she arrived on Capitol Hill in 2017. 

In another sense, however, Cheney is the natural fit to play Trump's foil. 

Trump had devoted much of his successful 2016 campaign bashing the overseas entanglements of the Bush-Cheney administration, most notably the 2003 decision to launch the Iraq War, which was championed by the elder Cheney. After taking the White House, Trump continued those attacks on the old Republican guard that had pushed an aggressively interventionist foreign policy, a group that included both of the Cheneys. 

Although Cheney had opposed Trump’s first impeachment, she was furious with his actions surrounding the attack on the Capitol, where a violent mob of Trump supporters tried to overturn his election defeat. More than 150 police officers were injured in the rampage. 

Cheney was one of just 10 Republicans to support Trump’s impeachment following the riot, and she’s jumped headfirst into her role investigating the tragedy. On Thursday, she used the platform of the televised hearing to warn those Republicans still backing Trump that history won’t treat them kindly. 

“Tonight, I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain,” she said.

Supporters of the far-reaching investigation note the significance of having a Republican of Cheney’s stature joining the probe.  

“It's important, because like she said, this is not about political parties, or your political views. It's about finding out the truth,” U.S. Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell said following the hearing. “And from what the committee laid out today, it seems like there's a lot more that needs to be done.” 

But Cheney’s recalcitrance has come with political costs. 

Last year, after Cheney refused to stop criticizing Trump for his role in the Capitol riot, the GOP conference voted overwhelmingly to boot her out of leadership, replacing her with a Trump loyalist, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), who has embraced the former president's lies about a stolen election. 

More recently, the Republican National Committee voted to condemn Cheney — along with the only other Republican on the select committee, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) — for their willingness to join Democrats in the Jan. 6 investigation. That decision, the Republican National Committee charged, “has been destructive to the institution of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Republican Party and our republic.”

In the wake of Thursday’s select committee hearing, the attacks on Cheney from Trump’s allies have grown only more pronounced. During the hearing, Tucker Carlson, the wildly popular Fox News pundit, characterized Cheney as “the Iraq War lady” who’s now “lecturing us about honor and truth.”

Carlson’s guest was Joe Kent, a Trump supporter from Washington state who’s launched a primary challenge against Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.), who also supported Trump’s second impeachment. He, too, had some sharp words for the Wyoming Republican. 

“It's absolutely absurd and insulting,” Kent said of Cheney’s attacks on Trump’s defenders. “She thinks that we can't go back and look at her record that she has been lying to the American people basically for her entire career and profiting off of it, but also she has to bring up this whole, ‘Oh it must be a big Trump thing.’”

Kent said the Capitol rioters were in Washington on Jan. 6 not because of anything Trump did or said, but because “a vast majority” of Americans “did not feel like their voices were heard at the election box, and therefore things started to get a little bit dicey.” 

In the face of such attacks, Cheney has found a new group of allies: Democrats, who have always opposed her conservative policy prescriptions, but are now cheering her on as she takes on a shared adversary in Trump.

“Liz Cheney and I do not agree on almost probably 80 percent of the contentious issues that come up, give or take 10 points,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) told reporters this week. “But what she is standing up for is the truth.”

“That's why she was removed as the leader of the Republican Party,” he continued. “Because the Republican Party didn't want to hear the truth."

Why Mike Pence will be a key figure at Thursday’s Jan. 6 panel hearing

Posted on (Updated by Brett Samuels

Former Vice President Mike Pence will not be present when the House Jan. 6 committee holds a prime-time hearing on Thursday, but he will be a central figure as the panel makes its first presentation to the public of what unfolded before and during the riot at the Capitol. 

Pence has not directly cooperated with the committee, but some of his former aides have. In recent months, a steady stream of new details has come out about Pence’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021, and he has publicly rebuked former President Trump for saying the election was stolen. 

“I anticipate that we will hear about Mike Pence on Thursday night. You can’t tell the story without him,” said Norm Eisen, who served as special counsel to Democrats during Trump’s first impeachment. 

Pence’s role in certifying the Electoral College results on Jan. 6, 2021, hours after hundreds of pro-Trump rioters stormed the Capitol, has only become more of a flashpoint in the investigation of the day’s events and in Republican politics more broadly. 

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a member of the House panel investigating Jan. 6, has emphasized the significance of Pence refusing to leave the Capitol as rioters were inside the building, suggesting to do so would have given an opening for Trump’s allies to follow through on their plan in Pence’s absence. 

The New York Times reported late last month that at least one witness indicated to the committee that Trump reacted approvingly to chants calling for Pence to be hanged. 

And the Times also reported in recent days that Pence’s former chief of staff Marc Short alerted Secret Service the day before the insurrection to warn of the potential security risks to Pence should Trump publicly turn on his vice president. 

The committee is likely to make the threat to Pence a central part of its presentation to the public as it seeks to capture public attention and lay out the gravity of the situation. 

The Washington Post reported that Michael Luttig, a conservative lawyer who advised Pence on handling his duties on Jan. 6, as well as former Pence aides Marc Short and Greg Jacob are among those expected to appear as witnesses during Thursday’s prime-time hearings. 

Eisen said showing how Pence rejected some of the legal arguments concocted by Trump’s advisers would help rebuff GOP attempts to brush off the committee’s findings as partisan. 

“So, the other way that Pence comes in is as a dose of reality in response to these lunatic legal theories that were circulating. So that’s an important part of the narrative,” Eisen said. 

Pence himself has grown increasingly willing to break with Trump over the events of Jan. 6 in particular as he charts his own post-White House path.  

The former vice president repeatedly referred to Jan. 6 as a “dark day” in history and spoke about upholding his constitutional duty in remarks to various conservative groups after leaving office. 

As Trump continued to make debunked claims that the 2020 election was rigged, Pence went a step further. In February, Pence explicitly said Trump was wrong to suggest he could overturn the result of the presidential election. 

“Under the Constitution, I had no right to change the outcome of our election. And Kamala Harris will have no right to overturn the election when we beat them in 2024,” Pence said at the time. 

Still, Pence has personally kept the Jan. 6 committee at arm’s length in public.  

In October, Pence suggested the media was focusing on the riot so extensively to distract from the Biden administration’s difficulties with the Afghanistan withdrawal and other domestic issues. 

And while former aides like Short and Keith Kellogg have testified before the panel behind closed doors, Pence himself has yet to come before the committee. 

A Pence spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment, including on whether there had been any communication between Pence and the committee. 

“We have wanted to make sure that we get as much information as possible from as many material witnesses as possible,” Raskin said Monday during a Washington Post Live event when asked about the prospect of Pence testifying.  

“We want to figure out exactly what happened. And Vice President Pence was obviously the object of this political onslaught on Jan. 6, so we need to fill in the details as much as possible about what happened there.” 

Asked if Pence’s life was in danger on Jan. 6, Raskin urged the public to tune in on Thursday night. 

“Watch the hearings,” Raskin said. “The hearings will tell a story about what took place on that day.”

Five questions that hang over the Jan. 6 committee’s public hearings

Posted on (Updated by Niall Stanage

The biggest moment of the Jan. 6 House Select Committee’s existence is about to arrive. 

On Thursday evening, the panel will hold the first of its televised hearings. The event will take place in prime time and be broadcast by almost every major network and news channel. 

For some, it will be the most dramatic congressional investigation since the Watergate hearings a half-century ago. 

Others — committed supporters of former President Trump, in particular — will likely tune out the hearings. 

Here are five big questions that have yet to be answered. 

What will we learn that’s new about Trump? 

Democrats are promising explosive revelations about the former president’s role in fomenting the attack on the Capitol. 

Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) on Tuesday promised in a CNN interview, “We’re going to see how much Trump was involved. Trump ran this show. He ran it from the time he lost the election in November, and he did it with his son, or sons, and all of his henchmen up there.” 

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a member of the committee, told The Washington Post in a Monday interview that the panel had “found evidence about a lot more than incitement here.”  

Raskin added, “I think that Donald Trump and the White House were at the center of these events. That’s the only way of really making sense of them all.” 

Ironically, the main difficulty Democrats may face in making the case against Trump is the vast amount that is already known. 

Trump was, after all, impeached by the House only one week after the insurrection, becoming the only president in history to be impeached on two separate occasions.  

At a rally at the Ellipse near the White House, immediately before the assault on the Capitol, he told supporters, “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” And he also told them that President Biden, if certified as the election’s winner, would be an illegitimate president. 

There have also been subsequent media leaks about other things the panel may have uncovered — including, recently, the suggestion that Trump was sympathetic to the demands of some of his supporters to “hang Mike Pence,” then the sitting vice president. 

There could be more shocking evidence to come. But the knowledge already in existence sets a high bar. 

Can the panel incriminate the Republican Party more broadly? 

The committee famously features just two Republicans — Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), who serves as vice chair, and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) — both of whom are vigorous Trump critics. 

That leaves the wider GOP in the panel’s crosshairs, especially if it can pin culpability for specific misdeeds on other members of the party. 

No fewer than 147 Republican members of Congress voted to invalidate the election results in some shape or form on the evening of the insurrection, with debris still littering the Capitol’s hallways.

Yet, at that time, senior members of the GOP were willing to acknowledge Trump’s culpability. 

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in February 2021 said on the Senate floor that Trump was “practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day.” In a recorded call with colleagues later obtained by two reporters for The New York Times, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) called Trump’s actions “atrocious and totally wrong.” 

But McConnell voted to acquit Trump on the impeachment charge in the Senate and McCarthy made his peace much more publicly, traveling to Mar-a-Lago to meet Trump. Last week, Trump endorsed McCarthy for reelection to the House. 

The GOP would far rather talk about the issues bedeviling Biden than Jan. 6.  

But if the committee can make a compelling case with fresh and additional evidence, Republicans may have little choice. 

Can the Democrats put on a show? 

For good or for bad, the theater of politics matters. 

So, one question will be how compelling Democrats can make the hearings. 

The first hearing is likely to be the most important of all, much as the first presidential debate in a series tends also to be the most vital.  

All three major broadcast networks, ABC, CBS and NBC, have said they will shelve their regular programming and replace it with live coverage of the Thursday hearing. So too have CNN and MSNBC. Controversially, Fox News will not air the hearing live, instead confining such coverage to Fox Business. 

Conservatives have taken umbrage at the decision by the committee to turn to a former president of ABC News, James Goldston, to help make Thursday’s presentation as compelling as possible.  

Axios, which first reported Goldston’s involvement, wrote that he was “busily producing” the hearing “as if it were a blockbuster investigative special.” 

We’re about to see the results. 

Do the hearings change the political agenda? 

There is little doubt that Thursday’s hearing will eclipse almost all the political news out of Washington. For that night at least, it will be the only show in town. 

But how long will that effect last? 

Trump allies have promised “counterprogramming” to push back on the narrative being advanced by the committee. 

House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (N.Y.) is kicking off that effort Wednesday, at a morning news conference with House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) and ardent Trump allies Reps. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).  

Stefanik told Fox News that she and her colleagues were “pushing back against lame-duck Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi’s sham political witch hunt.” 

More broadly, the White House has spent months on the defensive, embattled by a host of problems including inflation, high gas prices, an infant formula shortage and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The hearings will give Democrats a chance to put the GOP on the back foot — but for how long? 

Can the panel shift public opinion? 

Politically, this is the biggest question of all. 

Many independent experts, and even some liberals, aren’t at all sure the answer is yes. 

For all kinds of reasons, opinions around Jan. 6 have calcified.  

While Democrats see Trump’s culpability as self-evident, many Republicans seem willing to dismiss anything the panel uncovers. 

Meanwhile, a politically segmented media environment combines with the bias-reinforcing dynamics of social media to deepen those divisions. 

That doesn’t mean the committee is wasting its time. New evidence regarding Jan. 6 is important by its nature. 

But it may not be enough to change many minds. 

Jan. 6 panel seeks to break through with prime-time programming

Posted on (Updated by Rebecca Beitsch

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol is preparing for a crucial week as it prepares to finally share with the public the fruits of its months-long investigation into the riot in prime time on Thursday. 

The 8 p.m. hearing kicking off a series of meetings shows the committee is eager to reach a broad segment of Americans and relay the extent to which democracy itself was at stake that day. 

“The goal here is to construct this narrative,” said Molly Reynolds, a senior fellow in governance studies with Brookings.  

“What they want to do is go through the countless depositions that they've taken and other evidence that they gathered and figure out a way to try and convey a story to the public.” 

The challenge is making a captivating case for a wide audience, particularly those who feel they already know what happened that day or who are ready to move on from the attack. 

According to polling from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the country is nearly evenly divided on how much it wants to reflect on the day. 

While 52 percent said it’s important to learn more about what happened, 48 percent said it was “time to move on.” The divide is almost entirely partisan. 

“I do think that the committee will have difficulties in communicating messages because of the kind of segregated information environment in which a lot of the American public exists,” Ryan Goodman, co-director of the Reiss Center on Law and Security at New York University School of Law, told The Hill. 

“That said, I do think the visual of a solemn public hearing and live testimony plus, in all likelihood video material, could focus attention in a way [for] the members of the American public are otherwise not thinking about these issues.” 

Putting the hearing in prime-time shows the committee doesn’t want to just reach those who already view the attack as a grievous assault on democracy. It wants to reach independents and even conservatives who have heard GOP leaders brand the panel as a partisan witch hunt. 

Jesse Rhodes, a political science professor who helped craft the UMass poll, said even with the sharp partisan divide, there are those who don’t have strong feelings about the attack. 

“We're finding in the poll that about 19 percent of people are purely independent. And then there's another 9 percent who lean Democratic and another 8 percent lean Republican. So there is a little bit of mushiness in the middle. And those people potentially can be shifted,” he said, noting that just one-third of Americans strongly identify as conservative. 

“If there really is damning evidence of long-term planning, involvement in collusion by the president or his top advisers … that does have the potential to move some people.” 

Rhodes and others have warned the committee must be careful in how it frames such messaging. 

“I think the most important [thing] might be this is not perceived as a Trump versus Biden frame, which the first impeachment hearing pretty much was, but rather it imparts a Trump versus Pence framework. I think that there are many people that are concerned about the direct threat to Mike Pence that occurred on Jan. 6,” Goodman said.  

“I think that captures attention in a very different way. It’s not as political or partisan.” 

There are signs the committee could be leaning in that direction. Multiple outlets reported the panel has been in discussions about inviting Pence’s legal advisers and chief of staff to testify. 

“As soon as this is perceived as or appears to be a strictly partisan affair and an attack on the Republican Party as an institution, then you're going to get a lot of resistance or skepticism,” Rhodes said. 

“To the degree that the messages can be about upholding and maintaining institutions and values that benefit people, regardless of party, the more you will get at least a willingness to hear some of these concerns.” 

The panel’s makeup could help it.  

Republicans in the House objected during the two committee impeachment proceedings on Trump, but the two Republicans on the Jan. 6 panel agree with its objectives.

“Each hearing is going to be different than I think a lot of what we're used to seeing because everyone is rowing in the same direction. So you have the Democrats and you have [Rep. Liz] Cheney [R-Wyo.] and [Rep. Adam] Kinzinger [R-Ill.], so the committee is bipartisan, but they are all in pursuit of a shared goal in a way that just is not true of other recent high profile investigations, whether it be the Trump impeachment or Benghazi,” Reynolds said. 

“That’s going to make for a serious exposition of the facts that's just going to feel different than what we’ve gotten used to.”    

Goodman said the absence of Republicans opposed to the committee’s mission will not just change the tone but even the way in which information is presented. 

“I do not think that the hearings are going to be anything like the circus that has existed in hearings — and the impeachment hearings — in that past in which some members of Congress were simply playing to kind of a right-wing media. And so this will be a more solemn hearing which is going to be truth seeking, [that’s] the way in which I see it. And I don't think that hearings are going to be a source of disinformation. I think they're going to be a source of information,” he said. 

The committee has not yet announced who will testify at the first hearing, but it has pledged to release never before seen footage from Jan. 6. 

“The committee will present previously unseen material documenting January 6th, receive witness testimony, preview additional hearings, and provide the American people a summary of its findings about the coordinated, multi-step effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and prevent the transfer of power,” it said in a Thursday statement. 

It’s not clear what type of footage the committee plans to present at the hearing. 

While in the past it’s relied on visceral imagery — including an officer being smashed by rioters in a doorway and Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) barely escaping as the mob closed in on the Senate chamber — even new footage of the attack may seem repetitive to those who watched it unfold live on television. 

But Goodman said video recordings from some of the committee’s more than 1,000 depositions could be captivating for the public. 

Rhodes also said new information will be key, especially to break through in an unusually busy summer news cycle. 

“It can be a challenge to get people to refocus on events that occurred in the past, especially when there's going to be a lot of elite disagreement between Democrats and Republicans about what happened and who was involved in with what culpability,” he said. “I think that's a real challenge even though it sounds like the committee is going to have a lot of really juicy and damning information to share.”  

“They may be able to bring attention especially if they come out with some really shocking new revelations but it is going to be a challenge to break through everything that's going on right now.”